28 August 2013

Cold fusion reactor independently verified, has 10,000 times the energy density of gas.

Against all probability, a
device that purports to use cold fusion to generate vast amounts of
power has been verified by a panel of independent scientists. The
research paper, which hasn’t yet undergone peer review, seems to confirm
both the existence of cold fusion, and its potency: The cold fusion
device being tested has roughly 10,000 times the energy density and
1,000 times the power density of gasoline. Even allowing for a massively
conservative margin of error, the scientists say that the cold fusion
device they tested is 10 times more powerful than gasoline — which is
currently the best fuel readily available to mankind.

The device
being tested, which is called the Energy Catalyzer (E-Cat for short),
was created by Andrea Rossi. Rossi has been claiming for the past two
years that he had finally cracked cold fusion, but much to the chagrin
of the scientific community he hasn’t allowed anyone to independently
analyze the device — until now. While it sounds like the scientists had a
fairly free rein while testing the E-Cat, we should stress that they
still don’t know exactly what’s going on inside the sealed steel
cylinder reactor. Still, the seven scientists, all from good European
universities, obviously felt confident enough with their findings to
publish the research paper.

As for what’s happening inside
the cold fusion reactor, Andrea Rossi and his colleague Sergio Focardi
have previously said their device works by infusing hydrogen into
nickel, transmuting the nickel into copper and releasing a large amount
of heat. While Rossi hasn’t provided much in the way of details — he’s a
very secretive man, it seems — we can infer some knowledge from NASA’s own research into cold fusion.
Basically, hydrogen ions (single protons) are sucked into a nickel
lattice (pictured right); the nickel’s electrons are forced into the
hydrogen to produce neutrons; the nickel nuclei absorb these neutrons;
the neutrons are stripped of their electrons to become protons; and thus
the nickel goes up in atomic number from 28 to 29, becoming copper.

This process, like the “conventional” fusion of hydrogen atoms into helium, produces a lot of heat.
The main difference, though, is that the cold fusion process (also
known as LENR, or low energy nuclear reaction) produces very slow moving
neutrons which don’t create ionizing radiation or radioactive waste.
Real fusion, on the other hand, produces fast neutrons that decimate
everything in their path. In short, LENR is fairly safe — safe enough
that NASA dreams of one day putting a cold fusion reactor in every home,
car, and plane. Nickel and hydrogen, incidentally, are much cheaper and
cleaner fuels than gasoline.

As far as we can tell, the main
barrier to cold fusion — as with normal fusion — is producing more
energy than you put in. In NASA’s tests, it takes a lot more energy to
fuse the nickel and hydrogen than is produced by the reaction. Rossi, it
would seem, has discovered a secret sauce that significantly reduces
the amount of energy required to start the reaction. As for what the
secret sauce is, no one knows — in the research paper, the independent
scientists simply refer to it as “unknown additives.” All told, the
E-Cat seems to have a power density of 4.4×105 W/kg, and an energy density of 5.1×107 Wh/kg.

If
Rossi and Focardi’s cold fusion technology turns out to be real — if
the E-Cat really has 10,000 times the energy density and 1,000 times the
power density of gasoline — then the world will change, very, very
quickly. Stay tuned; we’ll let you know when — or if — the E-Cat passes peer review.